A Review of the Humanitarian Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Jordan, 2012-13
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FINAL A review of the humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan, 2012-13 Analysis of the emergency response capacity of the humanitarian system – Case study 3 October 2013 Sean Healy and Sandrine Tiller Executive Summary The conflict in Syria broke out in March 2011 and has since has massive humanitarian consequences both inside and outside the country. In neighbouring Jordan, by June 2013 some 600,000 people had sought refuge. This prompted a large-scale response to meet the needs of those refugees by the Government of Jordan and by the international humanitarian community. This case study reviews this response. Findings The Jordanian government and people have been largely welcoming of the refugee influx, and the GoJ has also sought to contain the wider effects of the influx on political stability and living standards. However, government services have come under increasing strain. This has led to growing concerns and therefore growing restrictions, especially on the border. The principal international support to the Jordanian government has been through the humanitarian community. Bilateral development assistance has been generally rather limited. The single largest refugee camp is at Zaatari, which in May 2013 held approximately 150,000 refugees. Humanitarian agencies have overwhelmingly focussed their efforts in Jordan on the camp, due to its size, visibility and difficult security situation. While there were initial difficulties in establishing it (up until winter), the levels of assistance are now appropriate. There is no health crisis in the camp, watsan, shelter and food likewise. This is despite the unhappiness of many refugees with the conditions. The exception is in protection, where initial failings to set up a proper police system have been compounded by lack of consultation with residents by humanitarian agencies and by refugee unhappiness to create a rather tense situation. This is only now starting to be addressed. Efforts to redirect donor and agency resources away from Zaatari have not been successful. Despite Zaatari’s purpose as a pressure release, the numbers of Syrian refugees in the cities has grown tremendously, to more than 400,000 in June 2013. Most refugees (85%) are registered with the UNHCR and so are eligible to receive assistance from both the humanitarian community (cash, vouchers) and from the government (free access to most services). However, the assistance that even registered refugees receive is not sufficient, either in breadth (numbers who receive it) or in depth (amount that they each receive). As a result, many are finding themselves in situations of destitution: one needs assessment found that 62% of urban refugees were living in situations considered less than acceptable for livelihoods and income, education, health, shelter and non-food items. The most vulnerable are those who are not registered – or whose registration has expired (after six months). There has been a large mobilisation of “emerging” actors in Jordan, especially from the Muslim and Arab worlds. This includes significant assistance from Arab donor countries, both through UN funds and directly to the Jordanian government. Arab NGOs and Red Crescent societies have also 1 mobilised to respond to this crisis, with varying degrees of connection to the existing humanitarian system. In health, there is a particularly important representation of these organisations, and they have played a corner-stone role at the Zaatari camp. There are questions about how well these actors adapt to the political and technical (public health) realities of emergencies like this. However, the consensus view is that these actors have filled very important needs: they can be more flexible (especially as they often provide unearmarked cash), they can be better adapted to the middle- income setting and they are certainly culturally acceptable to the refugee population. MSF started looking more closely at the Jordanian situation from late 2012, and its response has largely tracked the evolution of health needs. A long-running surgical programme in Amman, responding to those who need reconstructive surgery, has been expanded: Syrians now account for 50% of the patient load. MSF responded to a request from the Ministry of Health to intervene at Zaatari by establishing a paediatric inpatient/outpatient department there, which is ongoing and stable. Explos have pointed to larger needs in cities, and MSF is responding now with a surgical programme on the border (OCA) and a soon-to-open PHC/MCH programme in the northern city of Irbid (OCP). Humanitarian agencies have attached a high level of visibility to the refugee crisis in Jordan, but this has not always resulted in a clear picture emerging of that crisis (rather, the picture in the international media appears considerably worse than it is). Humanitarian agencies have been largely silent on the increasing restrictions on border access for Syrian refugees. If restrictions continue to mount, humanitarians will have some uncomfortable decisions to make. Conclusions The overall response has been large and largely effective, and has managed to prevent excess mortality, although refugees did have relatively good background health status. But it has focussed overwhelmingly on the camp settings and so missed crucial needs in the urban settings. In the cities, the strategy has counted too much on refugees’ own coping strategies and on the hope that Jordanian government services would not collapse. UNHCR can be praised for its implementation of a large-scale and largely effective response. There has been greater criticism of its coordination role, although this should be tempered by the scale of the coordination challenge. The more significant criticism is of its ability to lead or strategize. On various crucial points, its advice has either been ignored or not been incorporated, and it doesn’t seem to have been very successful in influencing the course of events. A very large humanitarian machine has been built, and relatively quickly, but it has largely focussed on the easier things, and has found it significantly harder to do more complex tasks, such as the urban response. Further, this appears to have occurred even though many people warned against it. It was not from lack of understanding or knowledge of the needs and challenges; rather it seems that, once in motion, the humanitarian response has been very difficult to direct. 2 Introduction Unrest in Syria began in March 2011 and escalated rapidly into a full-scale conflict pitting the government of Bashar al-Assad against a loose alliance of opposition forces ostensibly led by the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army. By June 2013, the war had devastated the country, killing some 93,000 people and leading to the displacement of some 4.25 million people within the country and an additional 1.6 million refugees into neighbouring countries. The Jordanian government estimates that some 600,000 Syrians have sought refuge in that Kingdom, sparking a major humanitarian relief operation involving both Jordanian authorities and organisations and the international humanitarian community. This case study was undertaken to assess and analyse this humanitarian response, to understand better its strengths and weaknesses in order to inform MSF’s own positioning as an emergency humanitarian responder in Jordan and the wider Syrian setting. This case study is part of a wider analysis of the emergency response capacity within the humanitarian aid system. Methodology Jordan was chosen as the venue for the case study because, firstly, of the scale and significance of the Syrian conflict and the consequent refugee crisis in Jordan and, secondly, because of the relative ease (logistical feasibility, security, political considerations) of an assessment in Jordan in comparison with Turkey, Iraq or Syria itself. A different but overlapping review of humanitarian operations in Lebanon had already been undertaken within the last year1, effectively excluding that venue also. This paper was based on a field visit undertaken by both authors to Jordan conducted in June 2013, which included visits to MSF projects at the Jordanian Red Crescent hospital in Amman and at the Zaatari refugee camp, as well as a visit to a clinic run by Syrian doctors in the town of Irbid, key informant interviews with members of the humanitarian community (international and Jordanian) as well as a review of reports and documents from MSF and the wider humanitarian community. A total of 37 key informant interviews were conducted with field and headquarters staff from MSF and international and national humanitarian agencies and with Syrian and Jordanian medical personnel, and three sector working group meetings were also attended (a full list of interviewees is in Annex 1, and an itinerary is in Annex 2). The reference period under review was from the establishment of the Zaatari camp in July 2012 until the field visit a year later. The case study focuses on the internal workings, decisions and processes of the humanitarian community, and therefore uses a qualitative methodology, aimed at drawing on the insights and judgments of a broad set of actors, rather than a detailed review of quantitative data, although (where available) we have sought to incorporate such at certain key points. Further, the case study looks at the overall response, and does not attempt an in-depth review of MSF’s medical operations. Context The emergency in Syria The Syrian civil war began as a civil uprising in Deraa, in the south of the country, on March 15, 2011 with mass demonstrations and resultant repression by the government of Bashar al-Assad. By April of that year, the government began launching military strikes against towns and cities considered to be anti-regime; by June, opposition groups were launching attacks on police stations, barracks and government installations. Defections from the military led to the opposition becoming better armed and organized, resulting in the formation of the Free Syrian Army in July; the group would lack a centralized leadership before December 2012 but rapidly added fighting units and capabilities.